Public backs third party — good luck with that

The government shutdown has pushed public support for a third party to a new high, but don’t expect a bunch of political saviors to rescue the nation from Washington’s constant strife.

Gallup says dissatisfaction with how Democrats and Republicans are running the country has prompted 60% of Americans to say a major third party is needed. That’s the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question 10 years ago.

Yet the formation of a new party would require two things that have been historically in short supply: The money to fund such an expensive undertaking and the willingness of thousands of loyal boots on the ground – dedicated volunteers and activists – to form a durable and long-lasting base. Someone has to go door to door to sign up new recruits.

Such high hurdles help explain why the two-party system has been remarkably stable since the U.S. began to operate under the Constitution in 1789. One has usually favored a bigger and more active government while the other has tended to support a smaller federal role.

Indeed, a major third party has never truly existed in America, and most attempts to create one have fizzled out.

Wealthy businessman Ross Perot made a half-hearted effort to start a third party as recently as the mid-1990s, for example, but he soon withdrew with disgust from political life. And former President Theodore Roosevelt tried to create a third party in 1912, mainly to support his independent candidacy to oust his Republican successor. The “Bull Moose” party quickly faded away.

The only other notable examples of third-party attempts took place in the decade before the Civil War, a period of constantly shifting and unstable politics. That’s when the modern-day Republican Party was born.

Yet the Republican party’s ideological roots go back much further to the Whigs (1833-1856) and even the Federalists, one of the nation’s two original political parties.

Modern-day Democrats trace their roots to Thomas Jefferson and the party he created in the 1790s, then known as the Republicans or Democrat-Republicans. By the late 1820s they took to calling themselves the Democratic party under President Andrew Jackson and have remained under that banner ever since.

Except for a period of one-party rule from 1816 to 1824 during the “Era of Good Feelings,” the Democratic and Republican parties and their ancestors have dominated American politics.